The Silent Ones

by Knight, Ali

  Helen gave a small smile, as if something Olivia had said amused her. ‘It doesn’t matter who I think it is, Olivia.’

  Olivia found herself thinking her psychiatrist’s brown eyes more appealing than any she could remember. Her hair was so thick and glossy. She imagined for a long blissful moment how wonderful it would be to stroke it. If she helped in a small way her mental dance with Helen in their therapy sessions would continue, hopefully for years. She thought with joy about all the entertainment, amusement and distraction it would provide.

  ‘Welcome back, Dr McCabe.’

  She had come home. And it was beautiful.

  79

  Darren was preparing to leave hospital. His overnight bag was on the bed; someone, probably Mum, had packed it and brought it in when he was unconscious and in intensive care. There was his washbag, a selection of clothes and, in a fit of enthusiasm, his mum had packed some art supplies. There were some files shoved in on top of it all with The Missing charity logo on them. Orin must have delivered them to the hospital some time over the past week.

  He had only a few minutes – Mum and Dad had gone to get the car and Carly was outside in the corridor getting water. Darren sat down on the bed and pulled the files out. The first one was a short profile of Olivia’s sister and a photo of her that was grainy and very blown up and probably from school. The second contained information about the murder of Rollo McFadden.

  Orin had paperclipped a note to the front in his spiky scrawl: ‘This is all the extra I could get. Remember the work of the charity is still as important today as it was yesterday. Come and join me.’

  He put the file aside. Orin had dug out this information in an attempt to woo him back when they were still grasping at the shortest of straws, when the possibility of finding all four of the remaining missing alive and well would have seemed beyond fanciful. Molly was the only girl who didn’t make it. Rollo is six foot two. Olivia’s words came back to him and he felt dread flicker down his spine.

  He picked up the file and opened it. There was a detailed report on Rollo’s murder. He had been a nightclub bouncer in Brighton and had had running feuds with several local drug-dealing gangs; he had two convictions for ABH. Rollo had been beaten about the head several times by unknown assailants in the front room of his house in Hove. The photocopied photos were evidence enough that his end had been bloody, brutal and vicious. Darren couldn’t stomach it; he had endured enough violence to last a lifetime. He was about to close the file when he noticed that the date of the murder was the day before Carly and Isla went missing. He tried to flick back to the front of the file but he fumbled the papers, and several photocopied photos from the back of the file fell to the floor. He swore. With his injuries, he couldn’t bend over to pick them up. He stared down at the photocopies of evidence collected from the crime scene and saw something that made his newly constructed joy drain away.

  A few moments later Carly came back into the room. She saw the change that had come over him and faltered when she saw what was on the floor. She shut the door.

  Darren was staring at a photo of a dirty carpet stained with Rollo’s blood. Lying by an upended ashtray, among a scatter of cigarette butts, a lighter, a crushed child’s textbook and a woman’s shoe, was a woven bracelet. The blue and green threads were knotted together in a Carrick bend.

  ‘What were you doing in Rollo’s house?’

  She sat down on the bed. She didn’t take her eyes off him. ‘There’s so much that you don’t know or understand, Darren—’

  ‘Just tell me the truth!’

  ‘Molly didn’t run away and then end up being abducted by Olivia, she retreated there of her own free will. She lived at Olivia’s for more than a year with Rajinder and Heather. She ran away from Rollo.’

  ‘What were you doing at his murder?’

  ‘Rollo did terrible things to Molly, appalling things to that child. She told Olivia everything and Olivia offered her sanctuary at her house.’

  ‘I want to know about you!’

  Carly broke eye contact and looked at the floor. ‘Isla met Olivia at a Reclaim the Night type protest. We all believed that as women we should be able to walk around without feeling scared, should be able to go about our lives in peace. Not long after that she invited us to her house because there were other girls there. Rajinder and Heather were older; Molly was this little fireball of a personality. It was a great place to go, like a fantastic youth club just for girls. Isla in particular loved it. Berenice was like a big mother hen and Olivia was the founder of it all. We had such good times there, but it was always our secret. We never told anyone else about it, we made sure we weren’t seen coming and going. Right from the beginning we understood that that was important.’ She paused. ‘It’s like we had been chosen, we were special, and we were proud of that.’

  Carly was off the bed now, walking round the room, animated as she spoke. ‘But there was a shadow that hung over our group. Berenice, Rajinder, Heather and Molly had terrible experiences in common: they had been abused and the culprits had got away with it. Olivia’s sister had killed herself after a similar experience. Olivia wanted retribution and we wanted to help her.’

  ‘My God, Mum and Dad had no idea what was happening—’

  Carly interrupted him, desperate now to get her story out. ‘Molly was the worst affected, I think, by what had happened to her: Rollo raped her over and over again for months. The longer Molly was at Olivia’s, the angrier she became. We thought we understood that anger; we were fired up about the injustice in the world. Isla in particular was desperate to really do something to put things right. She was the one who looked up to Olivia the most. She said there was no point sitting around and talking about it – that’s what victims did, and Molly was a victim no more. So she hatched a plan without Berenice or Olivia knowing. We were going to get Rollo to admit to what he had done to Molly.’ Carly came and sat back down on the bed. ‘Isla can be very persuasive.’

  ‘My God, what did you do?’ Darren asked, but he didn’t want to know the answer. After so many years of being desperate to understand, now he would happily die in ignorance.

  Carly’s voice had become very quiet. ‘We were so young and naïve. Molly lured Rollo to Olivia’s house. When he walked in, we jumped him. Isla hit him over the head and Rajinder, Heather, Molly and I tied him up. It was a mock court: the victim and the accused. And Molly set to work, accusing him of all the things he’d done to her. In front of us as her witnesses.’ She paused. ‘Rollo had a look in his eyes like I’d never seen. Such outrage and fury.’

  ‘What were you going to do then? Were you just going to let him go?’

  ‘We had a plan all worked out. He was going to sign a confession. But then Olivia came home. And that’s when it all went wrong. She was furious that we had jumped the gun, gone ahead without telling her. There was a big argument, Olivia shouting that we weren’t properly prepared to take his confession and at that moment when we were distracted, Rollo got free. He was a big guy and he was as mad as hell. He grabbed a metal doorstop and he smashed Molly in the temple with it. He killed her instantly.’

  Carly rubbed her hands down her jeans and got off the bed. ‘It was chaos after that. He bolted for the door. Isla and I ran after him. He was injured from where Isla had hit him earlier, stumbling and weaving down the road. We followed him.’

  ‘You were children!’

  ‘Yes we were. But we felt we were righting a wrong. The world was black and white to us then, a world of absolutes. We watched him go inside his house and …’ She faltered. ‘I was so angry. More furious than I had been about anything, or could ever imagine being. Molly had told us how Rollo used to lock her in at night, and she would escape by coming and going via the window with a broken catch in the toilet. Isla and I went down the side of the house. It was strewn with rubbish, Isla picked up a discarded metal bar and we climbed in through the toilet window. The house was dark, but we could hear him crashing about in the living
room.’ She paused, distracted.

  ‘We never doubted what we were doing. We stood in that rank hallway and we nodded at each other. Isla raised that metal bar and we ran through into the living room to meet him head-on. Isla swung that metal bar so hard. I remember the noise it made when it connected with his skull.’ Carly’s voice was a monotone, as if she had relived this moment thousands of times from every angle. ‘He was on the floor, his cheekbone was caved in. He was growling, this animal sound. He grabbed at me, hurling me to the ground. That’s when he must have yanked my bracelet off. He pulled at Isla’s legs and got her to the floor. He had his hands round her neck. He’d turned her over so he was lying on top of her. I wriggled free and picked up a barbell from the corner. I turned and smashed it down on the back of his head. I did it again and again until he stopped moving.’

  Darren was speechless for a second. ‘You could have gone to the police.’

  ‘We had forced our way into his house. I had moved across the room to pick up that weapon. I was fourteen, criminally responsible. I would have ended up living away from you, in the institutions Berenice and Heather feared so much and had run away from. If we disappeared, right then, like Molly had done, like Heather and Rajinder had done, there couldn’t be any comeback over Rollo. Isla urged me to do it, she was happy with choosing that path, but I was so much more conflicted. But I felt I had no choice. Isla had come up with the plan to capture Rollo, but I had freely gone on to kill him.

  ‘That night we took Molly out to the Downs, all of us together, and we buried her. It was a place she had walked with Olivia once, and she had liked it. After that, Olivia and Berenice took Isla and me in.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘We moved to the railway arch with Berenice and made it into a home. Berenice was unhooked from normal life – she had no job or identity or family – she was untraceable. Many people are. Olivia stayed in Brighton.’

  ‘Why did she confess to murder?’

  Carly shook her head. ‘Her cause was more important to her than her own freedom. She didn’t want our group to disband, she wanted us to hunt down who had abused her sister and caused her death. And her confession probably kept Isla and me out of jail.’

  ‘She really is mad,’ Darren said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Carly said. She took a deep breath. ‘Her saying she’d killed us made our decision to run away final. By then we were like a military unit – united by what we had seen and done and totally committed to each other. We mourned Molly and Olivia like fallen comrades and then we went to work. We didn’t follow the court case, watch the TV or read the newspapers, we all agreed it would be too painful. If I had seen even one image of you or Mum and Dad I wouldn’t have been able …’ She tailed off and struggled to compose herself. ‘And on some level I felt that I needed to be punished for what I had done.’

  A little track of tears had opened up and was travelling down her cheek. ‘I missed you more than I thought possible. But I had made my choice, because I had no choice really. My revenge for Molly caused you all such pain.’ The tears were flowing faster. ‘But when I saw you at the lock-up, Darren, injured and looking for me –’ she was crying now ‘– I chose you. I chose family over my childhood ideals.’ She took his face in her hands so he was forced to look directly into her eyes. ‘Remember what I said to you on the beach that day you got lost, Darren? “This is me, and this is you. We’re family, we can’t ever be parted.”’

  Darren had a thousand questions to ask, a million ways he wanted to rant and rail at his sister for the pain and heartache she had caused, and for the years of her precious life she had wasted, but he was interrupted. The door opened and Melanie came in. She saw Carly’s tears and gathered her up in her arms. ‘Oh baby, don’t cry. It’s been a long road. But we can all finally go home, together.’ She closed her eyes and put her face in Carly’s hair, revelling yet again in the glorious idea that she was back. She had no idea what Carly was really crying for.

  Darren put his foot over the photo and crushed it under his shoe.

  80

  Five Days Later

  Darren was back in the lobby at Roehampton. The place had a smell he had come to recognise but that didn’t stop it making him feel ill. How different things had been the last time he was here!

  Helen came to give him a pass and led him through the visitors’ entrance. She smiled as she greeted him and looked him up and down. ‘Do you need a wheelchair?’

  He shook his head. ‘I just need to go slowly.’

  They made their way towards the first security door. He heard the buzzer and shuddered.

  Helen paused. ‘You don’t have to do this, Darren.’

  ‘I know.’

  They walked down the long, dirty white corridors of the hospital until they came to a shut door.

  ‘It’s the same drill as last time. She will be chained up, you can’t touch her or give her anything. We’ll be watching from behind the glass.’ She walked away and Darren opened the door.

  Olivia was sitting at a table, her hands cuffed in front of her, a chain running down to shackles at her feet. The contrast to how she looked when he had last seen her – laid up in a hospital bed in a basement, weak from her operation – could not have been sharper. She glowed with health, her skin shone, her hair was smooth, the colour was up in her lips and cheeks. He sat down opposite her.

  ‘You look tired, Biological.’ Her eyes were sparking with flecks of gold, as if a thousand thoughts were colliding in her mind.

  ‘That’s not surprising. There’s been a lot to process recently.’

  ‘Reunions are such a messy business. The reality often doesn’t live up to the fantasy. Are you finding that?’

  Darren forced himself to stay calm despite her triumphant mocking. It was important that he didn’t get distracted, that he didn’t let Olivia rifle around inside his head; he was too fragile. He reminded himself he had come back here for one reason. ‘Where’s Isla gone?’

  Olivia sat back, at ease in her chair, seemingly at ease with life. ‘You know how many people have applied to come and have an audience with me? Have begged for five minutes of my time? I let only one in, Biological. You. You were very lucky to find those girls, but I forgive you, because you are very like me. Even in your cleaners’ clothes I saw the pain in you, the burden you bore of the unanswered questions about your sister.’

  ‘I’m nothing like you—’

  ‘You risked everything for answers – you nearly went to jail, almost lost your life. You tore down the world for your sister, and so did I. I don’t regret it.’ He couldn’t look away from her. She was insane, yet she was compelling. ‘Berenice and the girls have exposed fifteen men, you know. Seventy-five girls got some kind of justice from our methods: public confessions of murder, of rape and sexual assault. Even if the perpetrators didn’t end up behind bars they were named and shamed, their lives ruined. Gert Becker was simply the most extreme.

  ‘You know how I picked my girls? What brought them in particular to my attention among the river of sorrowful young people I swam through in my job as a social worker? They were fighters. They didn’t stand by. It’s a woman’s way, isn’t it, to put up and shut up, to tolerate and to keep secrets. The girls I picked were exceptional. They had fought their way out: of violence, of their callous care homes, and for Carly and Isla, out of their comfortable lives and loving families. They gave up everything, risked everything they had, to be able to change it.’

  He needed to stick to the task, not get distracted down the byways and chambers of Olivia’s mind. ‘I’m here about Isla, that’s all.’

  She smiled indulgently. ‘Darren, our greatest delusions we save for ourselves. I know why you look tired. Your joy at Carly coming home is tempered by what she did, by what I know.’ The smile disappeared as quickly as if a magician had whisked it away. ‘What I sacrificed for her.’

  Darren swallowed. The threat was plain. To save Carly and Isla Olivia had confessed to murders she hadn’t committed. Olivi
a having such a power over Carly and over him was almost too much to bear. ‘You wanted to punish me, you wanted to destroy my life because I dared to come near you,’ he said. ‘So you set me on the path to Rollo because you knew what devastating information I would find. But I found the women instead, something you never thought I was capable of.’

  ‘Calm down, Biological. It looks like it’s a win-win from where I’m sitting. Carly’s secret’s safe with me. Carly did more good from that railway arch than she ever would have done in the young offenders institution where she would have been sent for killing that bastard.’ She paused. ‘As for Isla, she’s not coming back. She was always different from the others. She craved an exceptional life, even at fourteen she wanted to upend the world. Orin will have to suck it up.’

  ‘Who’s she hunting? Who was it who ruined your sister’s life?’

  Her face dropped into its mask-like state, the light in her eyes gone. ‘I don’t know. We narrowed it down to a core of thirty of my dad’s contacts. Lauren talked to me about it only once before she put herself out of her misery. She was too scared to even utter his name.’ Her voice was low and unhurried, like acid dripping on metal and slowly discolouring it. ‘It’s been ten years. It takes a long time to eliminate suspects, to tail them at night and to befriend them online and to break passwords and to delve into the most hidden parts of a man’s life. But we will get there. When Isla gets close, it’s going to get dangerous. She’ll need help. When it’s required, Carly will fight the fight, and no amount of doltish adoration from her brother or fluttering hands from her mother will stop her. You know now what she’s capable of. She’s pretty impressive, your sister.’

  Darren glanced at the long black window at the side of the room, where normal people, good people, were waiting to lead him away from this. He felt so tired, so beaten down by the scale of her ambition. ‘It’s over, Olivia. It’s done.’